Fiberglass Work Begins

Fiberglass work is pretty simple, although as with most bodywork, there is an art to it.

Here are the materials that are needed.

Fiberglass work starts with a whole bunch of grinding. Skin, ear and eye protection must be used, as fiberglass dust is not good for your skin or lungs.

With the body of our Tornado Typhoon straight on the frame and the roll cage installed, it was finally time to start the laborious task of doing all the fiberglass work that this project would require.

When our expert, Tom Prescott, originally looked over our project he moaned. The bad news is that, while essentially sound, the original construction was not a good build job. And the added damage during the car’s life, made it an awful mess.

One of the first things that has to be decided on a project like this is how good you want it to be. With a trip to the prestigious Amelia Island Concours in our Tornado’s near future, the answer was we wanted to look pretty damned good.

We are not proponents of over restoring, but truth be told, a lot of the these early fiberglass specials were built by underfunded dreamers in their garages. While the Tornado was among the biggest and best of the specials builders, things like door gaps, proper storage space and safety were never real concerns.

To make a real car out of out Tornado, we would need to fix a few things and repair some damage.

That was the bad news. The good news is that despite being messy and itchy, fiberglass is very easy, forgiving and inexpensive to work with.

We purchased a five-gallon bucket of resin, some hardener and cloth and got started. The total cost for this huge amount of materials was just over $200. This would be nearly enough to do the whole car.

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